Stretching resources…and spirits
Garden photo, by Pia f. Walker
During the last year, I have learned tricks for how to get myself moving. Usually, if I don’t know what to do, the worst thing I can do is sit still. So I go out into the garden. I rake leaves, pull up weeds, clean a flower bed. The simple act of doing physical labor, of focusing just on moving muscles, prevents my mind from worrying.
Las week, I saw miniature pumpkins and gourds for sale. I personally hate how we as a society have moved forward, literally sped through seasons and holidays, by starting to sell Halloween merchandise in August and Christmas ornaments in September. Here in California, we are experiencing 90 degree days without a hint of fall winds in sight. Halloween is the furthest thing in my mind!
Yet my spirit needed a lift, a giant upgrade to first class. And these vibrant little pumpkins, golden orange, sunset red burned, spoke to me in the spirit of fire, of winds shifting souls, stirring up mysteries and new possibilities.
Miniature pumpkins and gourds photo, by Pia f. Walker
So as a looked over my garden, I began to catalog what I could use to decorate my front porch. I’ve never done that before. My husband designed our front porch so that it could be decorated, so that I could set it up however I wanted it to be like.
My fennel plants were full of 8 foot stalks topped with yellow bunches of flowers. I begun to cut, to trim, to bundle and create my own version of corn maze cornstalks bunches. The trimmed edges gave off licorice smell – and still do whenever I walk by. The bundles of fennel became the background for those miniature pumpkins and artsy gourds.
An old fabric ghost, stained by vegetable patch dirt after 10 years of use as a scarecrow, now hangs from the porch. Overall, my little porch now has a fall, Halloween garden container decoration.
Front porch photo, by Pia f. Walker
I sat back, and took in my cleaned front yard flower beds and the fall porch decorations, and hyperbolized into my art. I began to wonder about how to stretch my business resources. When I was preparing for my first art fair, I used packing boxes dressed up with fabric remnants as my greeting card displays. I borrowed card tables from friends and family. Everything was borrowed or an unused item sitting in my house.
I have always found using my current resources as a fun way to get things going. Yet I always feel strange as I begin to be around people who are always buying new things or think of bootstrapping as a $1,000 a day habit.
When I begun to think about the idea of running my own business, I didn’t find any references for people who had no credit, no savings, and no resources of any kind. Every reference assumed that the typical entrepreneur could afford to pay bookkeepers, lawyers, branding consulting, etc, all before actually making any more off their business idea.
I began to wonder if I had the sufficient amount of resources to being this adventure. Yet after some days in the garden, my head cleared and I remembered stories. Stories of people seeing the world by working on ships, washing dishes at different Parisian restaurants. Stores of people with $5 to their name but friends and family who believed in them enough to become “quiet” partners and provide start-up funds. Stories of people with resources they were unaware of until they cleared their minds and saw the depth of their rich portfolios.
I’m nowhere near a place where I can breathe easily; in fact I’ve never hyperventilated so much in my life. What I have learned, however, is that the resources exist, regardless of how few you think there might be. It pays to talk, to ask, to put your problems out in the open. This gives them voice, life, and it takes some of the pressure off you. It allows you to breathe, to give your spirit and mind the space for a solution to bloom.
Fall decorations, by Pia f. Walker
So start by sitting in your garden, looking at the materials that have grown by the help of your own hands. You are capable of creating solutions. Sometimes it just takes time and a little bit of weed-pulling.
